Official South Australian records — including social welfare records, family history, and school admissions — have been handed over to a company owned by the Mormon Church.

Key points:

FamilySearch is historically known as the Genealogical Society of Utah and was founded in 1894

It is dedicated to preserving the records of the family of mankind and access is free online

Members use history records to perform sacred temple ordinances, such as baptisms

The Department of State Records has partnered with a business run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Utah, to digitise the documents and make them available online.

Until now, the documents have only been available in hard copy by visiting the state records office in Adelaide's north.

The decision has brought about many questions, including why does the Mormon Church want your personal information? And what do they do with it?

What is FamilySearch?

FamilySearch was historically known as the Genealogical Society of Utah and was founded in 1894. It is dedicated to preserving the records of the "family of mankind".

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the primary benefactor for FamilySearch services.

Members of the church use family history records to perform sacred temple ordinances, such as baptisms, eternal marriages and sealings of children to parents, for their kindred dead if the deceased family members were unable to perform the rites themselves.

This gives deceased ancestors the opportunity to accept these ordinances in the afterlife.

Currently it holds over three billion records and offers services which include image capturing, digital conversion, preservation, online indexing and access.

South Australia not the only state to take part

Basically the Mormon Church has an agreement in place in parts of Australia to preserve its historical information.

Director of State Records of South Australia, Simon Froude said State Records of South Australia wasn't the only Government archive facility to have an agreement with them.

"Victoria has a current agreement with them and I know that New South Wales and Tasmania have also had agreements with them in the past," he said.

"The partnership with FamilySearch allows us to increase that reach so that members of the public who live in regional areas who aren't able to get to our Gepps Cross site or who live interstate or overseas, are able to actually access the records of the state of South Australia."

Mr Froude said anybody could access the records online, but they would have to sign up by creating an account which requires your name, birth date and sex.

You also need to tick a box, detailing whether you are a Member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or not, provide your email address and select your country.

"If you don't want to do that you can always access the records via State Records for a small administration fee, around about $9," he said.

"And obviously, people can still come into our research centre and access the physical records."

He said the Government had also saved a lot of money in the process.

Why is the Mormon Church doing this?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been preserving historical information since the 1890s.

Its website states its purpose is to help people connect with their ancestors through easy access to historical records, through the largest collection of genealogical and historical records in the world.

Fairfax Media journalist Liam Mannix — who has reported on the topic of preservation and digitisation of records in Victoria — said from his work, he believed the motivation came from the fact that if they could confirm an ancestor then they could baptise them.

"What they're motivated by, as far as I could understand it, is the very real knowledge that they are saving souls," he told ABC Adelaide.

"If you're a Mormon you believe that that is, in many ways, offering them salvation.

"The church firmly believes that this isn't a forced baptism because in the afterlife the soul still has agency and can choose to be a Mormon."

Mormon Kellie Nuss of Maryland in the United States told the ABC "family" was at the centre of the desire to preserve records.

"Families are very important to us, we believe that they last beyond this life," she told ABC Radio Adelaide.

"We really do believe that family life can continue after this life and we also believe that Baptism is an essential practice and that it must be done by proper authority.

"We also believe in offering it as a service to all the world."

What do people think about it?

SA Greens leader Mark Parnell said he had a lot of questions to ask about the deal.

"Sure these South Australian records are freely available online, but only once you have given your name, your email address, and ticked a box about whether you're a Mormon or not to the Mormon Church," he told ABC Radio Adelaide.

"The privacy provisions are the laws of Utah rather than the laws of Australia."

However, executive officer of the Society of Australian Genealogists Heather Garnsey had a different view.

"What you're experiencing in South Australia is something that is happening around other Australian states and indeed around the world," she said.

"What was known as the genealogical society of Utah, they have a wonderful track record for preservation of material.

"Many of these records would probably have just never become available to the public to look at, many of these historical records may not even survive if they aren't preserved and made available."

She said she understood the reservations people had when they heard that records were being kept by the Mormon Church, but she wanted the public to understand the type of information they were preserving.

"The records we are talking about are historical records, we're not talking about 2010 records here, we're talking about historical records," she said.